


Santa Cap

by PerpetualDaydream



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Fourth of July, Independence Day - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 04:47:58
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,452
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25078630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PerpetualDaydream/pseuds/PerpetualDaydream
Summary: The Fourth of July is nearly upon us, so Morgan wants to make sure to leave milk and cookies out for Captain America tonight. Too bad her parents aren't exactly on board with her plan...
Relationships: Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe) & Tony Stark, Pepper Potts/Tony Stark, Steve Rogers & Morgan Stark (Marvel Cinematic Universe), Steve Rogers & Natasha Romanov, Steve Rogers & Tony Stark
Comments: 7
Kudos: 33





	Santa Cap

**Author's Note:**

> I originally wrote a fic based on the leaving out milk and cookies for Captain on Independence Day Eve joke a couple years ago, but never posted it for some reason. It got deleted at some point, so I decided to write this one, which is probably better anyway since more movies have come out since then and we know what Tony's child is like. (If the story doesn't make it obvious, this takes place during the time jump, a few months before the Time Heist.)

“Daddy! Daddy! I have something to tell you!”

Morgan Stark ran up to her father, who was sleeping in a hammock just outside the family’s upstate New York cabin home.

“Morgan, I specifically told you not to--” her mother began, before quickly realizing her efforts were futile, as her husband’s eyes were already fluttering open. She sighed; it was as if the firm instructions she’d given her daughter on the car ride home from to not bother him about the topic she’d been raving about in the car ride home from preschool had gone in one ear and out the other. Pepper knew Tony wasn’t prepared for what was about to come out of their daughter’s mouth, and could only hope he wouldn’t react to it too badly.

Tony was now fully awake and sitting upright on the hammock, pulling Morgan on next to him. But before he could even ask his daughter anything, she was full steam ahead on her story.

“Daddy, Holly said tomorrow is In Attendance Day!”

Tony did his best not to chuckle at his daughter’s mispronunciation. “ _Independence_ Day.”

“That’s what I said!”

Another chuckle he had to hold back. “Right.”

“We have to make cookies!”

“We just made brownies yesterday, Morg. Or did you already eat them all when Mommy wasn’t looking?”

Tony began to tickle his daughter, but instead of giggling like she normally would, she shuffled away and stood up beside the hammock.

“We have to make cookies, Daddy. Holly said milk and cookies are what Captain America wants.”

Tony was taken aback at the mention of his former teammate. “I--uh…” he stammered as he tried to hide his surprise and discomfort from Morgan. “C-Captain America doesn’t live around here, sweetheart.”

Morgan either didn’t notice her father’s shift in demeanor, or was too fixated on her desire for cookies to care. “Holly said he comes to your house while you’re sleeping the night before In Insistence Day and if you leave him cookies and milk, he gives you a present.”

Tony couldn’t help but let out a little laugh, mostly out of relief that Captain America wasn’t actually planning on stopping by. “I think Holly is confusing Captain America with Santa Claus, Morgie.”

“No, Santa comes on Christmas Eve, Captain America comes on Iridescent Day Eve!”

“Morgan, Captain America doesn’t actually--wait, you know the word iridescent?”

“I’ll go get the cookbook so we can make the cookies!” And before Tony could say anything else, Morgan was already running back to the house.

“She got that impressive vocabulary from you, you know.” Pepper had been standing close by throughout the entire exchange, allowing her husband to field the latest round of cookie pestering from Morgan after enduring several on the car ride home.

“Well, she had to get _something_ good from me to balance out her stubbornness,” he smiled as the two began to walk back to the cabin.

“I should have known it was Holly that put this idea in her head,” said Pepper. “She’s always getting her going. Remember last week when she spent hours picking out every seed in her watermelon because Holly told her a new one would grow in her stomach if she didn’t?”

Tony shook his head with a smile as he opened the door and the couple stepped inside. “But that time the truth was a relief. This time it’s going to be a disappointment.”

“I guess we could just play along. Wait til she’s asleep, eat the cookies, write her a little note.”

“She’s too smart for that, Pep. We’re already gonna have to start typing the notes from Santa after she noticed how similar his handwriting was to Mommy’s last year.”

“Yeah.” The two of them plopped down on the living room couch. “Maybe it’s best if we don’t set up another version of that mess. I’m already afraid the Santa reveal is going to be upsetting enough when that time comes.”

“True.”

“Though I suppose there’s an alternative option…”

Tony raised an eyebrow.

“I mean...” Pepper took a deep breath. “You could always give Cap a call...”

Tony scoffed.

“I know you still have that old flip phone.”

“Pepper, you know that part of my life is over. Done. I don’t even know where that phone--”

“In the bottom right drawer of the tool shelf out in the garage, buried under a bunch of old design files.”

Tony sighed. “You really think he’d go along with this? We haven’t even talked since I got back to Earth after Titan.”

Pepper didn’t know what to say to that, so the two sat in silence for a moment.

“Yeah, no, this isn’t gonna happen,” Tony shook his head as he tried to push the thought out of his mind. “We don’t need another Stark to be disappointed by Captain America.” He stood up. “But now that I think about it, baking some cookies doesn’t seem like a bad idea. I’ll just have to make sure they’re so good she won’t even have any left to leave out tonight.”

Tony stood up and headed over to the kitchen. “Hey, Morg, you’d better not have turned on the oven before--” He quickly scanned the kitchen area, but didn’t see his daughter anywhere. “Morg? Morgan?”

-

Morgan Stark hadn’t just gotten her stubbornness and aptitude for a strong vocabulary from her father, she had also inherited his perceptiveness...and his drive. That’s why she’d made sure to place herself in a comfortable yet hidden position underneath the kitchen counter as her parents were coming into the house. She knew they were having one of their “serious conversations” and there was no way she wanted to miss out on what they were saying.

The littlest Stark also knew when it was time to escape, and she’d chosen the perfect time to do so; her parents were still engrossed in their discussion, but she’d gotten all the information she needed. She quietly zipped across the house -- still undetected -- quietly exited through the back door, and headed out to the garage.

Morgan was just barely strong enough to lift the garage door and slip underneath, heading over to the tool shelf. She was lucky the item she sought was in one of the bottom drawers; her plan would have never worked if it had been in one of the higher ones. Slowly she pulled the drawer open and began digging around for the treasure she was after, frequently pausing to look back and listen for any signs of her parents discovering her whereabouts.

Finally, she found her prize, or at least, what she _thought_ was her prize. She picked up the unfamiliar device and fiddled with it until it flipped open, confirming it was indeed the “flip phone” her mother had mentioned. Just as she realized she didn’t actually know the number she needed to call, she saw a small sticky note on the screen with a 10-digit phone number. She found the “on” button, waited until the phone started up, and punched the number in.

-

Steve Rogers looked up at the Avengers Facility with a melancholy feeling in his heart. He had dropped by the building nearly every week to do laundry for several years, but the same familiar ache in his chest came back every time, a reminder of the regrets and shame associated with this place. But, as usual, he did his best to push it aside and headed in the front door.

After greeting Natasha Romanoff -- the only person currently living at the compound -- and putting his loads into the washing machines, he quietly headed down the hall to do the thing he always did while waiting for his laundry to be done.

He tried not to stop and look around his former quarters. Nat had made it clear he’d always be welcome to come back and stay anytime, but the memories were just too much for him. So he simply walked over to his bed, and pulled out a small device from under his pillow.

As usual, Steve stopped for a moment to take a breath. It wasn’t a matter of getting his hopes up or not, after all, he’d have no idea what to do if he _did_ see something there, but he always felt a pang in his chest whenever he confirmed there wasn’t. So, keeping his expectations low, he flipped open the phone, turned it on, and anticipated the emptiness he always felt upon seeing the blank home screen with zero message notifications.

But this time, something new awaited him.

On the bottom of the screen, a little red number “1” was visible above the voicemail icon.

-

“So?”

Natasha was standing behind him now, but Steve’s gaze remained on the phone in his hand, frozen in the same spot he’d been standing in for the past 10 minutes. He knew Nat knew what was up; even though he hadn’t told her he was still checking the phone every week, she’d been the only person he’d confided in about it back when they were still on the run from the authorities.

Steve slowly turned around and set up the voicemail to play, making sure to turn on the speakerphone setting so Natasha could hear.

_“My daddy said this is Captain America’s phone, but you can’t tell him I called you because he doesn’t want you disappointing me like Santa. I’m Morgan Stark from New York and I wanted to say sorry I can’t leave you milk and cookies this year, my friend Holly says you give presents on In Abundance Day Eve to kids who leave them out for you, but my mommy and daddy said I can’t. But I wanted to wish you happy birthday anyway, and maybe next year I’ll make you a birthday cake and cookies, if my mommy and daddy let me. I don’t know if you like chocolate or vanilla, so I can make both if you want.”_

The two stared at each other in disbelief, each attempting to form words, but to no avail. Eventually, a giggle escaped Natasha’s lips, and soon both Avengers had lost themselves to laughter.

-

“You have to do it.”

The two were sitting on a couch at the compound now, bowls of mac and cheese in hand. Natasha hadn’t had enough advance notice to put together a proper two-person meal, but that was typical with their arrangement, and any shame or even thought of whether or not this was close enough to “real food” for a guest had gone out the window after Steve had described Morgan’s voicemail.

“It’s a nice idea, but I’m not sure about that.”

“Oh, come on. It’s just for fun. And we all know we don’t really get to have a lot of that anymore.”

“You really think Tony is gonna be happy to see me show up, unannounced, to take food from his house? After not talking for five years?”

“I don’t know…but I know the kid will.”

Steve sighed. “Yeah, but--”

“Come on, Rogers. Are you really gonna let that kid down?”

“Oh, don’t go down that road with me, Romanoff.”

Natasha smirked as she finished another mouthful of mac and cheese, but Steve just rolled his eyes before fixing them on his own bowl.

The duo remained silent for a minute before Natasha gently put a hand on Steve’s knee and he finally looked back up at her.

“I’ve seen that little girl, Steve. She’s adorable. _Heart-meltingly_ adorable. And you know how stone cold my heart is, so that means a lot coming from me.”

Steve sighed rolled his eyes again, but this time with a smile.

Natasha continued. “And it is your birthday tomorrow...you can’t tell me you wouldn’t like a couple of presents?”

Another moment of silence passed, but the mood lighter this time as Steve mulled it over. “Well, I never got to be on the other side of Santa Claus...but my stealth skills are a little rusty.” There was a playful glint in his eye, now, and Natasha’s lips began to form into a smile.

“Are you saying you need an accomplice, Santa Cap?”

-

Morgan rose fairly early the next morning, but as she moved to get up to go and jump on her parents’s bed like she normally would on a holiday morning, her eyes landed on her bedroom’s window sill and she slumped back onto her bed. According to Holly, that was where Captain America left gifts on the Fourth of July...or _would_ have if her parents had let her leave out cookies. (Though she had to admit, it was pretty nice to have to resist eating them all.)

Just as she was about to close her eyes and escape her disappointment for a little while longer, she noticed something sitting on the sill. It wasn’t a present, but a simple white piece of paper that had been folded a couple of times. She stood up on her bed and eagerly grabbed it to see what it said.

_To Ms. Morgan Stark:_

_Don’t worry about the cake or the milk and cookies. It’s probably for the best you didn’t leave them out anyway, I get a lot of those from all the other kids, after all. The message you left was better than any treats could ever be, though I think you should tell your dad next time you want to give me a call. You’re lucky to have such a great father; I never knew mine, so I want you to give him and your mother a big hug for me when you wake up this morning._

_Yours,_

_Captain America_

The note was signed by Steve on the bottom, though Morgan didn’t know what those squiggles were, and quite frankly didn’t care. She just wanted to make sure her parents got the hug Captain America had told her to give them!

Morgan ran into their bedroom, waving around her note. They took turns reading it for themselves, and after Morgan gave them their hugs, they sent her back to her room to get dressed so the day could get started.

“I see your forgery has improved,” Tony commented as he headed to the closet.

“Oh, don’t play around, now.”

“What are you talking about?”

“As if I could replicate Steve Rogers’s signature that well. What’d you do, copy and print it from an old document?”

“While I could have theoretically done such a thing, you know I said that part of my life was over.”

“Oh really now?”

“What’s that supposed to mean?”

Needless to say, neither of them ever relented on the matter. Which was just what Santa Cap and his Russian elf had intended.

**Author's Note:**

> If you made it to the end, please comment! It makes me feel less awkward about posting these lol.


End file.
